


He Deleted Braiding

by panickedbee



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Domestic Bliss, Established Relationship, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Parentlock, but they love their daughter very much, they're both still working things out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-10
Updated: 2017-10-10
Packaged: 2019-01-15 17:56:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12325956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/panickedbee/pseuds/panickedbee
Summary: Sherlock and John want to braid Rosie's hair. Doesn't work that well.





	He Deleted Braiding

"This is not…"

Sherlock holds himself back before that sentence can come to an end. He is still careful sometimes because he doesn’t want to sound too harsh or too arrogant towards John. Even though he knows John will like him anyway, has, in fact, started to like him when he was far worse, but when he sometimes tends to be more careful around him it feels more like an old habit saying hello. A habit from times where John wouldn’t even speak to him and he would very, very careful to not upset him in any way.

These times are long over now, luckily, but John’s heavy sigh still doesn’t feel good at all and puts a weight on his shoulders that he has tried to shake for quite some time.

"What? Out with it, Sherlock."

Now it’s Sherlock’s time to sigh. Well, he asked for it. "This is not how you do it."

John lets his arms fall down on the armrests of his chair, sounding exhausted. "Well, yeah, I sorta realised that this is not how it’s supposed to look like, Sherlock, I have eyes!"

"Pause," he says, quieter because he is speaking to Rosie now.

Rosie, comfortably seated between John's legs on the chair, lets herself fall forward and punches the space key of the laptop that they have placed on a chair in front of them. The video pauses. John helps Rosie to sit upright again, and she looks up at Sherlock with a smile. Sherlock smiles back and winks. Rosie loves the winks.

John loves the winks, too, but he is too busy staring at that paused video in frustration to see it.

"That’s it, I’m gonna google it."

They are trying to figure out how to braid Rosie's hair, and Sherlock (since he has deleted braiding a while ago) suggested a video tutorial. Turns out John is terrible at those.

"No. John, Youtube is a perfectly adequate platform for this. If you google it, you're just going to end up on WikiHow. Believe me, you do not want to go there."

"Well, but this is clearly not working. She is fu-" John bites his tongue, suddenly very aware that there is a toddler on his lap. "- _tricking_ her viewers. I followed every one of her damn steps, but so far instead of this," he points at the perfectly braided hair on the screen, "it looks more like a bird's nest if anything."

"Then you must’ve gotten one of the steps wrong."

"But I told you, I did everything exactly as she said!"

"Apparently you haven’t because if you look at the number of thumb-ups-" Sherlock leans over to scroll down on the touchpad. "There, twelve thousand positive to one thousand negative. Are you saying twelve thousand people are just wrong, John?"

"You say that all the time about any amount of people!"

"Well, yes but…" Sherlock has trouble finding a response to this. Sometimes he wishes John wouldn’t be smarter than he looks. "This is not a crime scene, John! This is about hair-braiding. Simply observing what is in front of you and replicating what you see. Even apes can do that!"

"Oh, alright then," John says in a tone that suggests it is not at all alright and he is seriously pissed. He lifts up Rosie and gets off the chair. "If you think you can do it so much better, Mr Deleted-The-Solar-System, then here."

Carefully but decisively Rosie is pressed against Sherlock’s chest, whose instinctive reaction it is to hold her to him and keep her safe. But he still only blinks back at John with insecurity behind his eyes. This is why he used to be more careful. So that he wouldn’t fuck this up again.

John stomps away to the door and opens it with force.

"What are you doing?" Sherlock asks, both Rosie and him looking after him.

"What you probably won’t find most apes doing. I'm taking a walk."

"Alright," Sherlock whispers to Rosie, trying not to raise his voice to a level on which it would break. "The two of us can manage while Daddy is out, can’t we?"

Suddenly, Rosie starts to wiggle in Sherlock’s arms. She stretches both her arms out as far as she can, reaching for John in desperate attempts. "No!"

Sherlock’s heart stops. John pauses in the middle of throwing on his jacket, all anger washed from his face and now replaced with an expression of surprise as his head turns in their direction.

"Did she…" Sherlock stammers. "Did she just say no to me?"

It isn’t the first word she has spoken, of course, it isn't. But it is the first that actually hurt him at hearing it. She struggles some more and finally, Sherlock lets her down. She runs towards John (as much as one can call it running at her age) and wraps her tiny arms around his leg. Sherlock watches them, moved and hurting at the same time, takes in John’s almost shocked expression as his own daughter forbids him to go, and that she would reject Sherlock this evidently.

His gaze drops to the floor then, so that he doesn’t see how Rosie pulls John back into the room by the fabric of his jeans, stumbling back in Sherlock’s direction, and he doesn’t see John warming up again. He doesn’t see it until he hears it, hears his whole-hearted laugh. With wide eyes, Sherlock's head turns sharply to look at him.

"Oh, Sherlock," he says gently, and a second later two warm hands are cupping his face. "She didn’t say no to you. She said no to me leaving in the middle of a fight. Pretty damn smart, that girl."

Sherlock closes his eyes for a moment, allows himself to calm down and remember that John won’t leave again. "Of course she is. She’s yours, after all."

His eyes are still closed when he feels John’s breath tickling his nose and John is standing on his tip-toes to close the distance between their mouths with a kiss. When they part, John smiles against his lips. "Ours," he corrects him.

Sherlock’s heart feels like it's bursting.

In this moment, Rosie randomly punches the laptop and opens one of the recommended videos on the sidebar.

_Meow!!_

It’s a cat video. John snorts.

"Yours," Sherlock jokes, but it's hard for him to hide a grin at this point. "Clearly yours."

"Oh, come on." He takes a look at Rosie. She seems to love stupid cat videos just as much as he does. "I know that one!"

He walks over to join Rosie in front of the laptop. Sherlock rolls his eyes in utter adoration. Then he joins them, too.

"It’s a compilation, John, surely you can’t know all of these, or I would seriously question your sanity."

"Shut up, Sherlock."

"It’s cat videos, John. They don’t talk. I cannot talk over them because they don’t-"

"Shut up, Sherlock!"

Rosie giggles. She has taken the place between John’s legs in his chair again, and Sherlock is sitting on one of the armrests, with John wrapping an arm around his middle.

Never would he have believed it, he thinks as he lovingly watches over John and Rosie having way too much fun with something so silly, had someone told him he could one day wake up and have this. _A family_. Someone to wake up to. Something he cares more about than the work, the cases, silencing the loud noises in his buzzing head. These days, his head is buzzing quietly. So, luckily, nowadays he is more than fine with being wrong sometimes. If the result is only half as fulfilling as this.

 


End file.
